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Facebook introduced a new program on Thursday that attempts to incentivize users to watch ads… by paying them in Facebook Credits, the company’s virtual currency. Just last month, Facebook finally announced Credits could be cashed in on its Groupon competitor, Facebook Deals. More…

The daily and social deals space is getting hotter everyday — Google launched Offers just last week — and Facebook showed up early this morning with a serious offering that could shift the tech world’s intense focus away from industry darling Groupon.

Facebook Deals is noticeably different from competitors like Gilt, Groupon and LivingSocial, so click on to see what sets it apart, how to find deals, adjust your notifications, and why the News Feed is so important. See slide show of FaceBook Deals here…

TechCrunch reports that Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Location and Local Services, told a crowd at the Social Loco social networking conference that Google Business Photos will soon be bringing Street View indoors. With the new service, users will be able to explore restaurants, stores and other businesses in a panorama interface that’s very similar to Google’s Street View. While sites like Yelp let businesses and users upload photos, Google Business Photos is relying on its own photographers to populate the pages, and Google requires businesses to opt in before letting photographers visit businesses. Think of the photographers like flesh and blood Googlemobiles. More here…

Details are continuing to emerge regarding Osama bin Laden’s top-secret Abbottabad compound, but the discovery of some high-strength marijuana plants just yards from the home has set the blogosphere aflame with speculation.

Said to be worth $1 million (though that estimate is now hotly debated), the home of the world’s most feared terrorist has attracted crowds of Pakistanis and media to its now sealed-off gates. But a stroll around the 20-foot-tall, barbed wire-ringed walls led CNN’s Nic Robertson to the cannibis crop, barely hidden alongside a garden of cabbages and potatoes. More here…

Oil prices took a nosedive Thursday in a historic selloff, erasing weeks of gains and indicating that the months-long climb in energy prices may have hit a ceiling.

Crude oil plunged 10 percent as startled investors unloaded their positions and a weeklong decline accelerated into an outright freefall. The price of U.S. crude went from triple digits to double digits, falling below $100 after opening at close to $110. Brent crude, a European benchmark, lost $12 at one point in a sell-off that exceeded the one following Lehman Brothers’ collapse, Reuters reported. More…